


Rearranging Hell

by guckindieluft



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, Major Character Injury, Utopia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-16 00:26:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1324864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guckindieluft/pseuds/guckindieluft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one fears here or fights here. No one is sick here or sorry here. No one but Levi, until he meets Erwin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rearranging Hell

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Cake's “Cool Blue Reason” (I'm just talking to myself/I'm just rearranging hell...), because 90's ennui is the best ennui.

+++

Levi’s street is always very, very clean, and the doors and shutters alternate evenly between red, green, and blue. Improbably, everyone maintains two neatly flourishing window boxes, and having met his dim-witted neighbours Levi is forced to suspect that a gardener comes down the terrace and tends to every window box but his. His plants aren’t dead, exactly, but they are small and anæmic, the product of a painfully stunted vision. Levi stares at them in a minor drama of irritation every morning, but he can’t actually imagine what they would look like healthy without also imagining taking them from the window box and transplanting them to the fields outside the city. 

“What did those flowers ever do to you?” someone asks, and Levi redirects his glower over his shoulder. 

“What?” 

The stranger smiles, just a sly flick up to the left. “What, nothing. You just looked pretty angry with them.” He leans imperviously into Levi’s deepening scowl, inspecting the flowers, and reflects, “Granted, they are the most pathetic specimens I’ve ever seen.” 

“Fuck you,” Levi says automatically, and then realises with a start that the stranger has directly insulted him, or at least his pansies. His neighbours are only ever inadvertently cruel and they never seem to notice when Levi is mocking them. When he looks up to catch the stranger’s eyes they slant to meet his conspiratorially. 

“Language,” he reproaches, mild, and when Levi only stares steadily up at him his smile cracks wider and he says, “Erwin Smith.” 

Levi doesn’t say that he didn’t ask for his name or want it, because even though he didn’t, he’s curious. Most people here don’t volunteer their names unless solicited, content in anonymity; everyone’s friendly but no one’s a friend. Instead, he just says, “Levi.” 

Levi doesn’t incline his head or volunteer his hand, and rather than holding out his hand stupidly like Levi’s neighbours would Erwin just stares, eerily relaxed. It feels weirdly like a standoff, Erwin’s gaze settled calmly, comfortably just over Levi’s shoulder, Levi forced to inspect the only thing at eye level, the stranger’s idiotic bolo tie, unwilling to crane his neck. The moment is exhausting and he can feel the pounding beginnings of a headache working their way into his skull. “I need to go to work,” Levi says finally, and when Erwin doesn’t move he snarls, “That means get out of my way, dipshit.” 

“Mm,” he agrees, and steps aside. He nods to the window box as Levi pushes past, and before he can work up a good stride Erwin muses, “They’d probably do better in the ground.” 

“Six feet under?” Levi quips, deliberately obtuse, but his stomach clenches at the thought of the fields outside the city and the times he has nearly carried the flowers out on some twisted mercy march. To an open sky and away from his darkness. 

“They’re not dead,” Erwin replies, and Levi resumes his walk away from the fierce glint that seizes his pale eyes. “But they’ll die if you leave them.” 

+++

Levi feels steadiest on belay, up in the air where he can’t hear the endless burble of conversation or see the faces of his eternally content neighbours. He even likes the hitching pull of the sit harness, the slight pinch between him and a long 25 metre drop. 

Levi appreciates having a long view of the world, spread out beneath him like a painted platter. The ground around the new windmill is torn to hell but further out Levi can see tall grass and tulips stretching out to the mountains that mark the horizon. Even the workers still milling about the site seem to step more slowly at this distance, just another lazy brushstroke of movement in the languid sweep of the landscape. 

He’s always been the smallest person at any construction site, but rope access work doesn’t call for size, and he’s there to inspect the place, not carry things around like a damn ox. It doesn’t bother him and nobody mentions it, just like nobody ever mentions anything bad. But Levi notices when a new shape breaks through the rest, taller by a head than most of the others. The sun glints brightly off the newcomer’s hair and Levi feels a strange certainty settle heavily in his bones. He begins to kick his way back down the tower, one eye to the tall man and one on the rope as it slides at a steady rasp through his gloves. 

The foreman intercepts him first and asks “Well? How is it?” Her face is so open and interested that Levi wants to kick out her feet and see what she’d do with a mouthful of mud. 

“It’s a piece of shit,” he growls. It’s never been lost on him that he’s the only person in the world who doesn’t find everything he sees wonderful, perfect, and good, and so he makes a living inspecting things and finding fault. He supposes that means that everyone else relies on his negativity in order to survive, but despite the hash the workers have made of the windmill’s construction he is perversely certain that had he not intervened it still would have worked just fine. Nobody’s ever gotten hurt in a building he’d inspected, but nobody ever gets hurt in a building he hasn’t, either. 

The foreman takes Levi’s notes cheerfully, and nods as she scans them. While the foreman reads Levi spins the karabiner open and unhooks himself from the rope with a small bounce. When he looks up again the newcomer is directly behind the foreman, smiling smugly. “The land surveyer,” the foreman explains, gesturing vaguely with a free hand.

“Erwin Smith,” Erwin agrees, and a scowl creeps across Levi’s face. 

“Do you have the memory God gave a goddamn goldfish? We’ve met.”

“You remember.” Erwin looks pleased. The sun is directly behind him, and this close Levi has to look up and squint to see his face, and it makes him angrier. 

“You were memorably annoying,” he confirms, and Erwin laughs. 

“You’re one to talk,” he says, and pauses significantly and leans down into Levi’s face, “you little shit.” 

A thrill lances down his spine and pools painfully at its base, muscles tight with nerves. “Your memory really does suck,” he leers back, absurdly pleased and almost smiling. “It’s Levi.” 

“The inspector,” the foreman agrees, nodding distractedly over her papers. 

“I could use your opinion, Levi-the-inspector. If I could borrow you for a moment?” Erwin gestures broadly off to the side of the building site, ridiculously elegant among the rubbish and workmen. Levi wants to find him comical but instead he finds himself carried along with the man’s earnestness, and together they walk out into the fields. They walk all the way to the tree line, huge straight pines like weird, massive toothpicks. 

Levi squints back at the work site, and finds that they have traversed a slight knoll and only the upper half of the windmill is visible. “You better not have taken me out here to murder me.” 

“I don’t know why I would,” Erwin replies matter-of-factly, but appears to consider it. “I think you might kill me, too.” 

Absurdly, Levi’s heart kicks into an excited staccato; nobody else has ever mentioned murder. Nobody even talks about death, as if it is just another thing that goes on quietly in the background mechanics of daily life like laundry or shopping for produce, although people do talk about that. Watching Erwin work through the probable outcomes of a fight to the death is probably the most interesting thing to happen in years. Eventually, Erwin catches Levi’s eyes on him and says, “What?” 

“Just inspecting,” Levi covers, which is also true. “Like you asked me to.” 

“And?”

“And you’ve got shit for brains.” He crosses his arms across his chest and looks carefully across the fields instead. “What are we here for?”

“Tilting at windmills,” Erwin replies obscurely. 

“What?” 

“I don’t know.” He glances down, and his shoulder twitches like he wants to bring his arm up and around him. “I’m sorry. Let’s go back.” 

+++

Sometimes Levi steals things. It’s settled into him like an addiction, although addiction is another concept he carries inside him only as an abstraction with an uncertain point of origin. He’s never seen it in anyone else. 

There aren’t even any police, although Levi isn’t sure why he thinks there would be. He’s read books with police in them, half-remembered stories, and the places they work are invariably filthy rabbits’ warrens of discontent and selfishness. He’s curious about the minds that invented these places and the kind of sloppy darkness that must live in their guts. They might understand one another. Levi can instinctively imagine what the streets would look like crumbling and bloody, too, but he’s never mentioned it to anyone else. He knows that he is an evil thing living in a world of good people, the single point of darkness around which society can form, like raindrops around dust. He doesn’t know what he is capable of, but he knows that he is rotten with it.

Erwin has turned up at the work site every day for some time now, and somewhere along the line they started to take their lunches together. Levi eats away from the others, in the grass, and even though Erwin follows him he still seems to lead, pushing Levi further and further toward the treeline every day. 

“Why don’t you ever take these off?” Erwin asks one day, tugging at a loop on the harness. Levi opens his mouth to say the harness doesn’t bother him when Erwin’s finger curls past his pocket and stops. Levi sits very still and lets him hook the finger into his pocket and pull its contents past the pressure of his leg strap. “The foreman was looking for this,” he says reflectively, and turns the pocket watch over in his hands. 

“What do you expect,” Levi snaps preemptively. “After all, I’m just a—” He stops suddenly, unsure of what he’d meant to say. Erwin looks like he might know, like he has whole worlds behind his eyes, but Levi doesn’t want to ask. 

Erwin sets the watch carefully to the side, on top of his upended lunch pail and out of the wet grass, although Levi is sure it’s impervious to water, just like the grass will never stain his trousers and his shirt will never tear. He doesn’t even know where he got the idea that they might, but he’s relieved to see Erwin observing the same rules of a nonexistent physics. “She’ll be glad to hear you found it.” 

“Yeah?” Levi challenges. “So you’re not going to turn me in—what do you want?” 

Erwin watches the grass bend in the wind rather than answer, brow furrowed, and after a long time the buzzing in Levi’s head burns away and he wonders who Erwin would have turned him over to. If he’d told the foreman that Levi took the watch she probably would have asked if Levi was having money troubles and if she could help. Nothing he did ever seems to have consequences. But maybe this does—Erwin looks disappointed. His eyes are tight and distant, and Levi watches him, and they sit like that for a long time. Their lunch was over hours ago, possibly, but nobody’s come looking for them. Levi wonders what would happen if they just got up and walked off into the forest and kept walking, if anyone would even notice; wonders what kind of world would grow up around their awareness. It would be a dangerous place, he thinks, and crawls across the perfect grass into Erwin’s lap. When Erwin’s gaze flicks back to him, surprised, he says “Shut up,” and kisses him. 

“Levi,” Erwin says, “Levi, please,” and they fall back into the grass together. 

+++

On evenings they go home together, or to the pub together, and they eat and sleep together. Erwin lives in Levi’s flat like he never had one of his own, but despite their combined efforts the flowers in the window box look worse than ever. The neighbours tut and offer unending, useless advice. Now that they live together Levi’s flat registers as a home in the minds of his neighbours, and they come by at irregular, nerve-jangling intervals, bearing casseroles. Their smiles are bland with pleasant menace, and Erwin greets them like a soldier, back solid between the neighbours and their threshold. 

The pub is clean and the heavy wood of the bar and walls and tables absorbs the noise, so he never has to strain to hear Erwin speak. Mostly, though, they don’t speak. At the end of the day Levi’s headaches intensify, ground in by the city. He goes up to the bar for plain water, and when he comes back an angry woman has Erwin by the lapels and is hissing, “You know he wouldn’t want this. It’s meaningless.” 

Erwin’s face is fiercely calm. “Did you see it happen? Did anyone?”

“It happens,” she snarls. 

“Not to him,” Erwin says, and looks up unerringly at Levi. “Ready to go home?” Levi nods, and Erwin guides him smoothly from the pub, the woman vibrating behind them. 

As they walk home, Levi rehearses the conversation he heard over and over again, scanning the empty streets and the dull, repeating flats and shops of the endless terrace. “You’re in trouble,” he guesses at last, and Erwin slants him a waiting look. “They’re going to find you if you keep looking for the bodies.” 

“They?” Erwin prompts, preternaturally composed, and Levi obediently concludes, “There aren’t any cemeteries here.”

“There aren’t any bodies,” Erwin agrees, and tucks Levi’s hand into his and holds it too tightly. 

At Levi’s house Erwin unwraps him carefully and lets Levi take his clothes off bit by bit, folding and hanging each piece. Levi leaves the windows open when they fuck, but the streets stay conveniently empty. The wind cards over them like it does out in the fields, and the sweat bisecting his brow and pooling at this throat stings with cold. He wipes the back of his hand across his eyes and Erwin says, “No,” before he can open them again and pulls his hands taut over his head, where the crease above his wrist bone pinches against the headboard. 

The bed clatters against the wall, the only sound apart from the harsh rattle of Levi’s gasps. He watches Erwin move in the darkness, white in the black, and considers the clacking, oversized footfalls of the bed posts and the wet, dying groans in his lungs and says, “Where am I?” and then, “Erwin, I’m close. I’m close.”

“I know,” Erwin whispers against his neck.

Levi blinks the viscous trails from his eyes and cranes to wipe his forehead on the inside of his arm. He doesn’t look at what comes away. 

+++

Levi catches sight of his own hands sometimes and feels violently displaced from his centre. They look old; they look like the hands he remembers his father having when he was very small, like they have been transplanted on. He doesn’t feel young, though, so he doesn’t know why his body shouldn’t look old, too.

Nobody else seems to think he’s as old as he feels. Sometimes a stranger will mistake him for a child because of his size, or a neighbour will elbow him and ask if he’s old enough for that drink, and Levi’ll tell him to go fuck himself. They all invariably laugh it off and call him 'such a character, that Levi,' and he’ll think they wouldn’t know danger if it shat on their face. But he doesn’t have a reason to believe he’s dangerous, either, so they’re probably right and he’s just a funny little man with some silly ideas about himself. He’s never actually hurt anyone in his life. 

He watches the light crawl across his right hand where it lies half-curled on Erwin’s chest. He thinks for the first time that there’s something strangely smooth and young about it, even though it’s about as calloused as one would expect and nicked here and there with the small scars of daily living. He scratches his fingers through Erwin’s pale hair and Erwin hums and brings a big hand down on his, holding it still over the thrumming heat of his heart. 

“I think I’m dying,” Levi says into Erwin’s neck, and Erwin nods slowly into his hair, drags his fingers down through the stubble behind Levi’s ear and back to the throbbing lump at the base of his skull. 

“We don’t have much time,” Erwin tells him, a little too loudly. “You have to let me help you, Levi.”

Levi feels small and strange in Erwin’s earth-scented arms. “How?”

“I can’t stay here much longer,” is all his says, and presses his fingers into Levi’s hair and insists, “We have to go.” 

Certainty makes his voice hard. “No. I’ll haunt your ass if you get yourself killed.” 

“The sooner I find you, the sooner I’ll be safe.” He strains to reach the drawer by the bed, muscles twisting under Levi’s open palm, and turns back to offer Levi a pistol, black and terrible. 

Levi stares at him wildly. “Where did you get this?” When Erwin just shakes his head, hair smearing against the pillow, Levi takes it and pushes up onto his other elbow. The back of his left hand and the inside of his arm is brown with dried blood. 

“Levi, please,” he says, “at least let me find your body.”

“You imbecile,” Levi growls and bends to press a kiss to Erwin’s surprised face. “This doesn’t work if I’m dead.” He swings his arm up and effortlessly settles his finger on the trigger, and Erwin’s pupils blow small and precise as he fires it up through the gap in the open window and into the sky. 

+++

Firing a flare gun in an enclosed space doesn’t do anything to improve the state of his head wound, and less than halfway back to the wall Levi blacks out completely. He tries to fight it, because he’s seen men and women nod off hours and hours after a simple crack to the head and never wake up again. He cranes over Erwin’s shoulder and watches several titans kick down the mill tower, drawn to the smell of his blood under the massive stone wheel but lethargic in the moonlight. He tries to concentrate but it’s like running up a vertical wall of wet tar and he goes under without meaning to, his entire world reduced at the last moment to the harsh gusts of Erwin’s laboured breath against his face. 

He dips back to the surface again and again but can’t keep his grip for a long time, and by the time he breaks free once and for all he has somehow made it into a bed. Erwin’s bed at headquarters, he notices, and Erwin himself bent half-angled over the paperwork on his desk and half toward Levi, waiting. “Hey,” Levi says, and when Erwin startles and scratches a long line across the topmost paper, “stupid.” 

Erwin just smiles and pushes over to the bed, nudges Levi over so that he can sit against the headboard and gather Levi against his side. “So. How was death?” 

“Clean,” Levi mutters, gripping his hands tightly. “Not that you assholes would know what that looks like.” 

“Poor Levi. You must have been bored.” 

“Yeah,” he says, “I guess,” and lets Erwin rub his thumb over his brow. “I bet you’ve let the place go to shit while I was out of it.” 

Erwin presses away the swollen lines under Levi’s eyes and says, “Probably.” He looks very pointedly as though he hasn’t left the room in days. If Levi shifted his foot just a centimetre to the left he’d dislodge a pile of paperwork that would take a cadet weeks to sort out again. Everything is covered with the ostentatious detritus of Erwin’s Very Important Work, and Levi loves and loathes him in equal parts. 

“You pigs would live in filth if I weren’t here to kick your ass. Good thing you found me.”

“Good thing,” Erwin echoes, and offers magnanimously, “I’ll help.”

“I know.” Levi slants a look at Erwin’s wry smile. “Hey. Do we have a garden here?”

For once, Erwin looks genuinely startled. “Not really. It’s pretty much gone wild.” 

“Thank fuck,” Levi says, and tucks his head under Erwin’s bemused smile and falls asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Guys I spent like an hour reading about windmills on Wikipedia. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are super appreciated! Ya'll warm the cockles of my crazy heart.


End file.
